A song which really ought to be dear to my heart, since Chemistry was the subject I studied at University and then taught in schools.
(The video does have in it that typical agglomeration of chemical apparatus which visual media use as a shorthand and actually doesn’t make much sense – the green and red solutions are particularly incongruous. I liked the rotary evaporator though.)
MacColl’s first “hit” of the 90s. It only reached no 82 though. Lyrically it’s coming from a similar place to her first hit, There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis. This one isn’t at all “rock”y, though, and has a Country feel.
Kirsty MacColl: Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim
Musician and legendary record producer William Orbit has died. As well as making records in his own right he worked with a multitude of artists across his career and is widely credited with reviving Madonna’s when he produced her Ray of Light album. TI am not really a fan but the two Madonna songs I regard most highly, Ray of Light and Beautiful Stranger, were both created with Orbit’s oversight.
This Orbit track, his arrangement of Samuel Barber’s composition, reached no 4 in the UK in 1999.
William Orbit: Barber’s Adagio For Strings
William Mark Wainwright (William Orbit): 15/12/1956 – 23/7/2026. So it goes.
Until I checked I would have said that this was Joan Osborne’s only UK hit (no 6 in 1995) but it seems she also had a no 33 the next year with a song called St Teresa.
I must confess I don’t remember that heavily accented little introduction (about the heavenly airplane [sic]) she gives in this video.
